


The Art of Being Broken

by Destina



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel Lives (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Lives, Dean Winchester Prays to Castiel, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Happy Ending, Jack Meddles For A Good Cause, M/M, OTP Feels, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Soul Bond, Team Free Will (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28835064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: After Dean cheats death (again) on a hunt gone wrong, he finds himself talking to Castiel once in a while, because Cas's sacrifice is an unhealed wound. He never expects an answer to his prayers...but there are new rules to this old game, and the Winchesters are overdue for a miracle.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 175





	The Art of Being Broken

**Author's Note:**

> All my thanks to RurouniHime and Killabeez for their heroic efforts to eradicate extra commas and polish up the rusty bits, and for their very insightful suggestions. For the purposes of this story, I set my own post-canon timeline, and handwaved some medical stuff. 
> 
> It's been a long time since I last wrote Dean/Cas, but like everyone else in this beautiful corner of the fandom, I love them and I couldn't bear where the canon left them. I needed them to be happy. Bless every writer who feels the same, because they have delivered ALL the fix-its. ♥

Dean didn't die, was the thing. 

Granted, it was a nice change of pace - he was so used to being at Death's doorstep that he was a little surprised a Reaper didn't show up at the foot of his hospital bed and make nasty threats. But the world order was out of whack all the way around. What Reapers were even left? Who had taken over for Death after Billie got swallowed up by the Empty? He had no idea. No time to worry about that, because he was a little bit busy learning how to breathe again, how to move his arm, how to sit up without feeling like every organ he had wasn't going to fall out of his body. That piece of rebar ripping through his chest had done some real damage, the kind that was never going to heal right; there would be scar tissue in his muscles and his lung, and his body wouldn't ever let him forget again. 

He spent a month in the hospital. Afterwards, Sam told him, voice wavering, that for a while it was touch and go. They had him in a coma for some of that time, teetering on a familiar brink, but Dean remembered very little of it. What he did remember was Sam's voice, telling him not to be such an asshole, to come back; asking why he'd picked now of all times to take a vacation; Sam's voice, clotted with tears and regret, telling Dean he was sorry, that it was his fault for not seeing the danger, for not moving fast enough. That had always been Dean's role in things, to protect and feel guilty anytime he didn't manage it, so he had wanted so much to take his brother in his arms and give him a good shake (and then a hug) for getting it all wrong, but he couldn't move. He'd drifted away again to where there were no sounds, and no little brother's tearful pleas to feel anxious about. 

It wasn't like the other times he'd been in a coma - he didn't come right out of his useless body to end up standing there awkwardly, waiting to get stuffed back in. He drifted in a pleasant darkness, and once or twice, he opened his eyes to see Jack standing at the foot of his bed. Not really Jack, not like he had known him best. More like a soft orange outline of him, like an ember in a bed of thick ashes, the darkness clinging to the edges of that light like wet black velvet. He remembered feeling a surge of awe, and love, and then sadness, until Jack smiled at him, and Dean sank back into the darkness, lighter. Less lost. 

He also remembered speaking to Jack, sort of. It was a thought, or an approximation of thought, words directed at Jack because he loved the kid, whether or not he'd been able to prove that in any way that mattered. _I hope you're okay. I hope you know we miss you._ And because he couldn't control his feelings, didn't even see the point of trying - _I wish you could have saved Cas. I wish I could have. I'm sorry he died, Jack. I'm sorry for everything. I wish we'd had time._

No idea if Jack really heard him. He definitely had better things to do than to lurk at Dean's bedside, listening to his wistful deathbed regrets. Being God, and all. 

All of that was lingering in the back of his brain when he woke up, cotton-mouthed and limp, to Sam's wide tear-filled eyes. 

After that, there was a month of physical therapy, and then he was shuffling around the bunker, trying not to feel useless. Sam took to hugging him at random moments, snuffling into his shirt a little bit, and Dean rolled his eyes and sent Sam off with Eileen so he could groan through his exercises in peace. He'd be happy, if something happened there. _When_ something happened. He was bound and determined to be positive about it. Why not? He was the boy who lived, after all, even if he'd never take a deep breath or fire a shotgun without pain again. 

**

How many chances could one man get? It was a question Dean hadn't wasted a lot of thought on before he was impaled and could see the last minutes of his life about to run out one last time. He'd always just thought of it as the cost of doing business - doing whatever it took, and taking what comes as a result. He'd given up his life gladly a dozen times for the good of the cause and the people he loved, or tried to, but he'd always had a hell of a hard time accepting that anyone else would give that for him. 

His whole life, he'd been the one to make the play, but then his dad, and Sam, and so many others - even Crowley - had shown they would step up. Often, for him. 

The worst one, though, had been Cas, because...well. Because. 

Dean was great at building boxes in his mind, tidy compartments where he stuffed down feelings and trauma and all the other stuff he couldn't look at directly. After Cas died, Dean had built a big one for that whole thing, because otherwise he couldn't get off the floor, couldn't get in the car, couldn't go find Sam and make sure he was okay. And he'd left his grief and all the unresolved other stuff packed away there in the weeks and months after - had never opened it, never peeked inside, never let himself think about what could have been. Ever.

Then he'd been hurt, and he started thinking about how fucking stupid it was that Cas gave up everything for him, and it had made all the difference, and he'd never even said thank you. Maybe Cas couldn't hear him, down there...over there...wherever the hell the Empty was. Or maybe he could. And Dean just...hadn't tried. His best friend, who had loved him, who had saved him more times than he could count, was in a forever darkness, and Dean had been dodging every emotion about that choice since he walked out of the room where it happened. He owed Cas so much, and the least he could do was acknowledge how that made him feel. 

So he broke the box open one night, and sitting with Miracle in the library after Sam had gone to bed, he took a sip of his beer and said, "Hey, Cas." 

He stopped there, because saying it made him smile, and then he chuckled at himself and took another sip of his beer. (He had to get it in before Sam barged in and de-beered him; it was on the forbidden list, but love finds a way, as he liked to remind Sam often, and no one could part him from his true loves of beer and Baby for long.) 

"So, everything turned out okay," he said, picking a little at the label. "Jack is...well, let's just say, you were right about him all along. It was a rough road to get here, for sure, but he's turned out good, Cas. We did good. I think." He glanced up at the ceiling and added, "Uh, not that we're taking credit, exactly. Just, I think we helped set the tone." He toasted to the invisible omnipresent Jack who might or might not be listening, and then set the beer on the table, next to Jack and Cas's names, where he'd carved them into the wood the night they won. 

"We got a dog, by the way," he said, glancing down at Miracle, who was currently slobbering on his boot. "And we're back to doing business, just like always. I, uh, we sort of, I had an accident on a hunt. Almost died." Miracle got up and hopped up into his lap, and Dean buried his fingers in the dog's fur, petting him gently. "Got me thinking, I guess. All these close calls and second chances people bought for me with everything they have. All the thanks I never got to give." His hand stilled in the dog's fur. "I owe you everything, Cas. Fuck, the universe owes you everything. You gave us the chance to work out how to beat Chuck at his own game. You gave me...you gave me my life." 

He blinked back tears. "I knew you, um. That you loved me. I always knew, I guess. What I didn't know until the moment after you were gone was that I hadn't shown you that I..." Dean swallowed hard. "I'm no good with words. There are things I don't say, so I tried to, I don't know, prove it in other ways. But it got derailed by how mad I was at you, and we kept tripping over each other. I got so tired of screwing it up, of being angry at you, of being scared of losing you again and again and again. So here I am again, talking to you when you're gone, when it's too late. Fuck, I'm such a slow learner." 

For so long, he'd allowed anger to control him, in all its forms from coldly distant to lava-hot, mostly aimed at the wrong targets and almost never resolved. It made him sick to think about the years he'd wasted being pissed off. Miracle wriggled around in his arms until he could lick Dean's face, which Dean allowed because it was all wet anyway. 

"You always could read my mind, even when your powers were gone. I really want to believe you knew how it was for me. How I felt. About you." He faltered. "Even if I didn't understand. Shit." He picked up the bottle and drained the rest of it, then set the empty down. It was complicated, sure, what he felt, why he hadn't really faced it. Why he couldn't. 

He had fucked up so many goddamned missed chances, sad goodbyes...he was fucking tired of it. So tired. 

"So if you can hear me, now you know. Thank you for what you did. I...I miss you, man. I wish...a lot of things. But none of that matters. Just, thanks." 

He supposed he'd never stop knowing how to end a prayer without it being awkward, but prayers had never come naturally to him, anyway. And he'd probably never stop expecting Cas to answer, even if he was truly gone. 

Which might have explained why he kept doing it. 

It became a little bit of a habit - mumbling to Cas over coffee in the morning, which got him weird looks from Eileen and Sam; telling him something funny about Sam in the moments before he fell asleep at night; asking Cas questions he could never answer when he was puzzling over something weird during a hunt. (Not that Sam was letting him _actually_ hunt, the big mother hen; he was stuck on FBI interrogation duty most of the time, while Sam did the fun stuff. If he was lucky, Sam might let him burn something. It was infuriating. On the bright side, he never had to dig anything up, so he was winning there.) 

In a way, it felt safe, because he was pretty sure Cas couldn't hear him, and that made him bold. He spent a wistful evening while Sam was out with Eileen telling Cas all about how Sam had never had a chance to be happy, how Dean had either ruined it for him or how their lives wouldn't allow for it, and how much he wanted Sam to have a chance for a wife and kids. "Can't turn back the clock," Dean said out loud to the universe, to Cas, to himself. "Maybe could make better use of it going forward, though." 

He didn't say it out loud, but he spent a little time thinking about Lisa and Ben, who had been his family, until he made them forget and forced himself to forget, too. He'd thought a lot about her in the last couple of years, her kindness and acceptance of his faults; mostly when he did, he also thought about how Cas had always been there for him no matter what kind of mess he made, and how much emptiness there had been in Dean's heart every time he had died. It was the kind of gaping hole he couldn't fill with booze or random women; they'd touch him, and he'd think about the ways Cas had touched him, how his touch had literally healed Dean in all the important ways over the years. 

He'd shied away from accepting all the things that emptiness had made him feel, but there was only so long he could pretend he didn't know what those feelings were.

On the first anniversary of Cas's death - and six months out from Dean's near-death experience - he took his baby out for a drive and found himself a pasture with a clear view of the sky. He sat on the hood and drank a toast to Cas, and let himself think, _I love you, you dumbass_ , while he looked up at the stars, which seemed brighter and closer ever since they booted Chuck out of Heaven. 

Then he climbed back in the car and drove home, because they had a hunt to get ready for. He'd need a good six hours of sleep in order to put up with Sam's bitching all the way to North Dakota. He was going, though; Sam could take all his mother-henning and shove it. He missed being on the road, behind the wheel. He was overdue for something good. 

**

"Dean!" 

Dean sat up in bed, fully awake and listening. The bunker had its own night sounds, and his brain rattled through the list, trying to find what was wrong --

_"Dean!"_

That was Sam, shouting his name - really shouting it, the way he only ever called for Dean when somebody was dying or danger was already on top of them. He couldn't read which it was, no time; he hauled himself to his feet with a groan, grabbed his gun and ran, lopsided and clumsy, a burst of adrenaline all that was keeping him from falling down on the way to the library. Sam wasn't calling anymore but that didn't mean he was okay.

He rounded the corner and stopped dead, his left hand pressed against the wall to hold him up. It vibrated under his fingers, quaking beneath the fearsome power on display in the middle of the library. 

There was a bright light near the ceiling - no, not a light; almost like a portal, but not any portal Dean had ever seen. Brilliance streamed out from the center, velvety orange. He had seen that color, but only in coma dreams, when he was near death. Maybe it hadn't been a dream after all. 

"That's Jack," Dean whispered, as Sam made his way to Dean's side. The entire bunker felt alive, strung with tension, like it was about to implode; Dean's ears thrummed with it. 

Something formed in the center of that brightness, the outline of a body. If Dean squinted, he could see its shape. Two arms, two legs; the flesh was forming into it, out of nowhere, out of -

Sam gasped, and his fingers curled around Dean's elbow as Dean's hand found Sam's wrist. They stared together at the human form, still coalescing, becoming solid.

"Cas," Sam said, just a rasp of the word. Dean's breath hitched and stopped, and started again, and he lunged forward, but Sam yanked him back. "No, wait," he said, and Dean obeyed the urgency in his voice, though every molecule of him wanted to run up there and wrench Cas down. 

Because it _was_ Castiel, pure and made new, suspended in midair, and the blinding light around him was dimming to a radiant glow.

As they watched, writing appeared on his skin, and Dean recognized it instantly as the tattoo Castiel had placed over his ribcage when he fell, when he was first truly human. A moment later, a second tattoo, over his heart; an anti-possession tattoo, identical to the ones Dean and Sam both wore. Sam sucked in a long breath, and Dean's heart twisted in his chest, because he knew for certain now who the author of this body was, and why he'd chosen those symbols for Cas's skin. More writing appeared over his collarbones, lettering Dean had no clue about. 

For a split second the tension was suspended, and then the thrumming against Dean's eardrums stopped. The silence was equally deafening as they stared - and then silver light burst forth from _inside_ Castiel, growing brighter and brighter, until Dean and Sam both cowered away from it, knowing it for what it was and understanding from long experience how it could blind them forever. 

Always before, Dean had thought of angel grace as icy blue-white shivers cascading through his blood when Cas healed him from fractured bones and stab wounds. This was that, but muted, warmer; this _felt_ like Cas, like his presence was there with them, even as the form in which he had always appeared to them hung overhead - their self-sacrificial angel, arrested in the act of falling back to Earth. 

Dean peered up into that light, and gasped to see the familiar shadow of long wings, arcing behind Cas's body. 

The light vanished, and Castiel dropped in slow motion to the floor, unconscious. And then Dean moved, breaking away from Sam to kneel beside him, to lift Cas into his arms and hold him. "Cas," he begged, looking desperately at Sam. He shook Cas gently and pressed a hand over his heart. "Castiel." 

"Is he..." Sam reached out a tentative hand. 

"He's warm," Dean said urgently, "there's a pulse, I feel his heart beating, it's-" And then he bent his head to press his cheek to the top of Castiel's head, unable to speak. 

"Hang on, I'll get a blanket." Sam gripped Dean's shoulder for a second, and then he was up and running toward his room. 

Dean hugged Cas close, and then pulled back to look at his face. "Cas?" he said, hating how his voice cracked, and also not caring at all. 

Castiel stirred in his arms, and air started to come back into Dean's lungs. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath, waiting for whatever was coming next. 

Sam was back with the blanket, and together they wrapped it around him, as Dean ran his hands over Cas's arms and shoulders, his mind racing through a million questions.

And then Castiel's eyes opened, that familiar, piercing blue. They locked first on Sam, and then shifted immediately to Dean, and widened. "Dean?" he rasped softly, an expression of confusion on his face. 

"Still here," Dean said, through a watery smile. "Not for lack of trying."

"What do you mean?" Cas said, frowning slightly. It was the frown that undid him; it was so...Cas.

"Sorry, I'm...sorry," Dean said, "I'm so fucking glad you're here," and then he yanked Cas against his chest and pressed his cheek to his hair again, because otherwise he was going to embarrass himself any moment. Slowly, Castiel turned his face toward Dean's shoulder, leaning into him, and they stayed like that for a long, long moment, breathing together. 

"Cas, can you stand up?" Sam asked softly. His hand was back on Dean's shoulder, a comfortable reminder that he and Cas weren't alone. 

It took Cas a moment to answer. "I can try, but I'm..." Cas struggled against the blanket, and Dean backed off immediately, freeing his arms. Cas shuddered, and Dean winced like he could feel the cold racing though Cas's body; it echoed through every ache and half-healed wound in his own chest.

"Let me." Sam stood and reached down to set Castiel on his feet. But Castiel wobbled, and then collapsed. "Got him," Sam said, as he bent his knees to scoop Cas up in a fireman's carry. 

Dean followed Sam as he headed down the hall; he tapped Sam on the shoulder and said, "My room." 

Sam rounded the corner and set Cas down gently on the bed as Dean flicked on the light. The two of them shuffled blankets and sheets until Cas was tucked in; Dean pulled the blankets all the way up under his chin, to cover all that exposed skin. 

Then they both rounded back to the end of the bed and stood there, staring at Cas. 

Sam cleared his throat. "Someone-"

"Jack." Dean was certain. He couldn't have explained how he knew, how he understood now that Jack had been with him somehow when he was fighting to live, but that light...he was sure.

They looked at each other. Sam nodded, and swallowed. "Jack...remade him."

"He said he wasn't going to interfere. Sam, he could have brought him back the last time we saw him. When he brought everyone else back." 

"Maybe he was too busy putting the world back together." 

"Come on, this is Cas we're talking about; no way Jack just left that detail out." Dean ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm his thumping heart down. "Is he...angel, or human? I mean...that was his grace, right? I thought I saw wings."

"No idea," Sam said. "Looked like it, but shouldn't he be powered up now, if he has his grace? The only time I've ever seen him sleep was when he was hurt, or when his powers were weak or gone. And his wings...yeah, I don't know, Dean, this is crazy. If he's, uh, brand new, why is he out like a light?"

"Great question," Dean answered. 

They continued staring; Cas kept right on breathing, warm and safe in Dean's bed, and suddenly Dean's knees were weak. He put one hand on the baseboard. "Don't ask me if I'm okay, I'm fine," he said testily, because he could feel Sam's concerned mode activating right next to him. "Better than fine," he added, but he went ahead and sat down at the foot of the bed anyway. "I'll stay here with him, in case he wakes up." 

"Okay." Sam hesitated. "Maybe I should stay too, in case-"

"No, it's fine. Nothing's going to happen. This is a good thing, Sammy." Dean looked up at Sam, whose expression shifted from worry to tenderness when he saw Dean's face. Normally that would have made Dean roll his eyes, but everything he saw on Sam's face, he felt down to his bones. "Check those totally useless wards that protect this place from basically nothing, and go to bed." 

"You should get some rest, too." Sam was attempting stern, and failing totally; he kept glancing at Cas with that soft, happy look he got when something worked out just right. It had been missing from his face for a long time. 

"Hunt's cancelled, though," Dean said with a grin. 

"Yep," Sam said, grinning right back. He closed the door behind him as he left. 

Dean turned his full attention to Castiel, who appeared to be sleeping quietly beneath Dean's sheets, and his mind bounced off in a direction he hadn't sent it in years. Was that how it had been, when Castiel rebuilt him after snatching him out of Hell? Had he reassembled Dean the same way, sending his grace sparkling through Dean's rotted body and making it whole? No matter how hard he tried, he'd never been able to remember a single instant of his rescue from Hell, or the aftermath, before waking in the ground as whole as he'd been before the hellhounds had come for him. Now that he'd seen it, the power of it...knowing how it had happened raised goosebumps all over his body as he realized the sheer power required to make - or remake - a being from nothing. 

But this wasn't like Dean's rescue. There had still been something of Dean to rebuild, no matter how damaged both the body and the soul had been. Castiel had been taken to the Empty whole, in the human shape that had been his own for years before the Empty took him. He'd been rebuilt before, by Chuck, who had continued to remake him in that particular shape over and over. Dean understood why. It was Cas, and Dean knew Cas by the way his body slumped, or straightened; by how he frowned, or the way one corner of his mouth turned up when he was amused. Even by the way his gaze had settled on Dean, when he'd said he -

Nope. He wasn't going to think about that now. The way he'd died...it was important, but Cas was here, whole. Surreal, maybe unbelievable, but that was just par for the course, wasn't it? Dean rubbed his hand over his face and winced when pain shot through his arm and down his torso. He'd definitely strained something that wasn't quite healed when he dropped to his knees beside Cas. 

The blanket they'd wrapped Cas in when he first arrived was on the floor by his feet, so Dean scooped it up and pulled it over himself as he stretched out on the bed. He had a thousand questions, but they weren't getting answered until Cas woke up, and he wasn't feeling so hot himself. This wasn't even the strangest thing he and Sam had seen, in their long and event-filled lives...but it was close to the most awesome, for sure. 

Cas stirred as Dean lay down; Dean stopped, held his breath, but Cas just curled in on himself like a cat, facing Dean, like he wanted to be as small and close as possible. It made Dean grin to look at him, but it also made him feel tender. He curled his own body beside Cas's; it was instinctive, like he could spare him from whatever unseen storm had brought him back to them. It was weird to think about those days when Dean had thought Cas all-powerful, because that hadn't lasted even a year. He'd been worrying about Cas, trying to protect him, find him, bring him home, make him stay, for almost the whole time he'd known him, even when he'd been shoving and pushing at him to go. It hadn't mattered how much smiting Cas did, how many demons or angels he'd killed, even how much power he'd acquired (or thrown away). That instinct in Dean had never died - it had grown even stronger when Cas had become truly human for a brief time, and it had never faded away again after that. 

Dean had never been able to sense or see Cas's grace in his human form, no matter that he was supposed to be an angelic host himself. He only knew Cas as alien by the way he looked into Dean, and straight through him, and saw everything he was. No one else had ever been able to do that, not even Sam, who knew him better than anyone. It felt strange and wrong that he'd seen that beautiful light pouring back into Castiel, and yet had never really seen what Cas looked like - how he was truly formed. 

Maybe that didn't matter anymore. He had seen Castiel as a warrior, a friend, as a father and brother; he had seen him fully, painfully human and consumed with god-like power, had seen him be selfish and yet give everything of himself. He _knew_ Castiel, and Castiel knew him, as he'd proven over and over. 

All that new warding on Cas's earthly body, over his ribs, was too tempting to resist. Dean tugged the blanket down gently so he could see those additional wards across Castiel's collarbone. He smoothed his fingertips across the lettering - the lightest touch, so he wouldn't wake Cas. Enochian, maybe, and letters he didn't recognize. Probably some other long-dead and obscure languages that didn't belong just to angels. Maybe ordinary words that no living humans could read or speak. That would be fitting. Sam could get his nerd on in the morning, if Cas woke up in time to object to being stared at and read like a parchment. 

Dean grinned again, and pillowed his head on his good arm. He was uncomfortable and aching, but that didn't matter at all. Having Cas near enough to touch, and to take the liberty of actually touching him, felt both dangerous and right. Looking at Cas's face, slack with sleep and free of weariness for the first time since Dean had known him, quieted that part of him that had been calling out for Cas since the moment he died. 

Sometime in the night, Dean shivered in his restless sleep, and felt Castiel's warmth pressed against him; an overwhelming softness that enclosed him, soothing him, keeping him safe. "Cas," he whispered, leaning into that protective shelter. 

"Shh," Cas said, "rest." Quiet happiness suffused Dean as he settled against Cas's body and let himself sink back into sleep. 

**

When Dean opened his eyes again, feeling better than he had in months, Cas was awake, and they were nose to nose; Cas's fingers were tangled with Dean's on the blanket between them. A warm weight was over his feet - Miracle, he knew. Which meant Sam had opened the door for the dog, and let him into the room at some point, so they'd been sleeping a while. And Cas was still there, blue eyes taking stock of Dean as he slept. 

"Holy shit," Dean said, moving not even a millimeter. "I thought I dreamed it all."

"I'm very real," Cas said softly. And then he added, "There's no catch," as if he could feel the caution and suspicion screaming at the back of Dean's mind. Old habit, to brace himself for the other shoe to drop and everything to go sideways. 

Dean squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, and then sighed with relief to see Cas was still there, which made Cas smile in return. Dean wanted to touch his smile, trace it the way he'd traced the writing on his collarbone, but he also didn't want Cas to stop holding his hand, since it had happened while he wasn't looking. So he made a joke, instead. 

"I'd blame it on the booze, but Sam threw me on the wagon and won't let me off."

Cas stroked his thumb over Dean's wrist in slow, even sweeps. "So I've heard. It has been your frequent complaint, as I recall." 

Dean's mouth went a little dry, because oh, no. "You, uh. You were able to hear my prayers?"

"Your recent ones, yes. Certainly since you were injured." Castiel's eyes darkened with concern. "I was glad you prayed, Dean. I know you might never have said those things if I were still-"

"I'd rather have had you here," Dean said in a rush. Not saying the things he...still technically hadn't said. 

"But if I'd been here," Cas went on, relentless, "neither of us would ever have known how the other felt. I certainly would never have spoken of it." 

And there it was, unfurled between them like it was just ordinary, the biggest and most monumental revelation of Dean's life. All the things he'd never dared to say...but he'd said them after all, hadn't he? He'd said them, and Cas had heard them, and there wasn't any reason to pretend he didn't feel it anymore. He could just...love him. If Cas wanted Dean to love him. Which was a crazy thought, but maybe that wasn't how it worked for angels. After all, he still didn't know why Cas was back or what his purpose was in returning. Maybe that was all in the past, just a quaint little footnote to what they used to be, and Cas didn't feel that way anymore...maybe he was his old, detached angelic self, and it was too late. 

He was still trying to catch his breath from that horrible thought when Cas closed the inches between them and whispered against his lips, "You should stop worrying and kiss me now, Dean Winchester." 

That sensation of being warm and close and loved was back, and Dean shed the fear of Cas not wanting him. He only had to lean in, and then it was done; Cas's lips were soft and pliant under his, opening to him as Dean let go of Cas's hand to put his arm over Cas and bring him even closer. All the years he'd tried not to think about this, and had pretended not to want it, and it was so much more than he'd ever hoped. It was like finding home again, after searching for it endlessly and not knowing where it might be. 

Cas kissed him, and Dean let himself begin to believe that it would be okay, maybe, to let himself have this. And to let Cas have him, too. 

After a little while, Dean broke a long, soft kiss and said, "Cas," because he had to know. "What the hell is going on? Why are you here, really?" 

"Because we need each other," Cas answered simply. As if it didn't have to be any more complicated than that. As if Dean's entire life, he hadn't been ruthlessly taught not to need or trust anyone but Sam, since no one could be relied on except his brother -- until Cas had descended into their lives full of grace and fury and changed their futures forever. As if Dean could help needing him, or loving him. Dean would never want anyone else with such fierce devotion. He understood that now; trust Cas to have seen it clearly all along. 

Dean drew his fingers through Cas's hair, and allowed himself to trace that handsome face, touch those lips, because he didn't trust himself to speak. Which was okay; he could tell by the way Cas was watching him that he knew. 

Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "You're not getting away with that. This is...this is more than a miracle, Cas. There has to be a reason."

There was a knock at the door, and then the door cracked open, but tellingly, Sam did not poke his big head inside. Clearly when he'd let Miracle in, he'd seen plenty, even if there hadn't been anything to see. "Good morning?" he said tentatively from the hall.

Cas chuckled, and Dean narrowed his eyes. "You have never understood that your thoughts are always written on your face," Cas said, and then it was his turn to trace Dean's cheekbones, his lips, his left eyebrow, with confident fingertips. "Come in, Sam," he said, raising his voice. 

Sam didn't take that dare; he stuck half his face in, clearly afraid of becoming traumatized, which made Dean grin. "Hey," Sam said. 

Dean sat up, dislodging Miracle (who immediately shifted his attention to Cas, who seemed delighted to meet him) and then slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, stretching cautiously. Mornings were always the worst, and this one was no exception, especially since he'd been sleeping weird. "Hey yourself." 

"Just checking to see how...everyone...is doing." 

"I'm feeling better, Sam," Cas said, arms full of dog. "Thank you for helping me last night." 

"Sure," Sam said. Dean looked over at Sam, because he could sense an imminent question explosion in 3...2... "Cas, how are you...Did you escape from the Empty?"

"In a manner of speaking. Jack pulled me out of the Empty."

"What?" The brothers looked at each other, and Sam said, "I thought God didn't have any power over the realms between worlds?"

"Chuck didn't. But Jack has always been different, because he was a Nephilim. You may remember, Jack woke me in the Empty before, with only a thought. A wish, really." Cas blinked slowly, and rolled to his side, then pushed up to a semi-sitting position. "This time, it was deliberate." 

Dean exchanged a stunned look with Sam. Apparently the rules for a lot of things were changing. It was unsettling, but maybe it was for the best. Jack had a good head on his shoulders. So to speak. "Is there more?" Dean asked. 

Cas hesitated, and Dean knew instantly that there was a lot more. "I asked to be allowed to return to Earth, and he agreed." 

Dean lifted an eyebrow, because if ever he'd been fed half a story - this was that and then some. "Just like that? You asked, he dropped you right into the Bunker?"

Oh, there was Cas's guilty look. He _hated_ that look. It always appeared like a green sky before a tornado, deadly like poison and full of secrets. He was getting ready to start in, sling some old baggage around the place, but Sam advanced a little further into the room, and Dean saw he was carrying some clothes - pants, it looked like, with a tag still on them. Plus a little plastic bag on top of the stack.

"I went out and grabbed you some pants and personal stuff this morning - you can borrow a shirt from Dean," he said, with a pointed look at his brother. He set the stuff down on the bed. "I'm going to stir up some eggs and toast, and there's coffee in the kitchen, if you want some?"

"Coffee sounds excellent," Cas said. "Thank you, Sam."

"Great. I'll just," and here Sam backed away three steps, like leaving the presence of royalty, "be in the kitchen. Okay then." He closed the door behind him again. 

Dean rubbed at his chest, which was all he could do when he started getting that pain, because his arm wasn't long enough to reach the actual wound on his back. "Seems like there are a few more things to talk about, maybe?"

"I'm very hungry," Cas said, as he pulled the pants toward him slowly. He was watching the motion of Dean's fingers against his chest, the same way he'd always focused in on Dean's hurts, both large and small. "If it's all right, I'd like to explain over breakfast. And coffee," he said, perking up a little. 

"As long as there's going to be actual explaining." Dean tipped his head forward, eyes still narrowed, and waited until he got an answering nod. Just because they'd been making out - holy shit, they'd been _making out_ , yesterday Cas had been dead and now they were kissing like nothing had happened - what the fuck was his life these days - didn't mean Cas was off the hook. Yet. 

He turned to the dresser and rooted around until he found his blue hoodie and a black T-shirt in the bottom drawer. They were two of his favorites, worn soft from years of use. "These are clean, and they've shrunk some in the wash," he said, tossing them backwards toward the bed. "Whatever you need, you can grab from here, if you want something else. There's toothpaste. I'm betting Sam got you a toothbrush. If you need those. Do you?" He didn't look back. 

"Yes," Cas said. There were rustling sounds; blankets moving aside, Cas digging through the bag, and clothes being drawn on. "I do." 

"Good," Dean answered, meaning so many more things than 'glad I can provide you some toothpaste.' The idea that Cas was there, dressing in normal clothes, in need of normal things like kisses and toothpaste and a comb, made his hands tremble a little. He'd never managed to have anything he really wanted for long without it disappearing or being taken from him. It was practically a Winchester motto that good things were never true, but this time... 

Maybe this could be. If he let it. 

He rummaged around for a pair of clean jeans while Cas brushed his teeth at the sink, and swapped out his sweats for jeans and a T-shirt. When he turned around, Cas was standing there in new trousers with severe creases down the fronts of each leg, the T-shirt on, and Dean's hoodie wrapped comfortably around as a top layer, zipped halfway up. His hair was standing up in spiky bursts, and Dean could still see the edges of that writing on his collarbone under Dean's T-shirt, right where he'd rested his fingertips the night before. 

"I'll just..." Dean gestured to the sink, where he promptly fumbled his toothbrush and dropped it, and made a quick show of oral hygiene while Cas stood very close to him. It reminded him of the old days when Castiel had never respected his personal space, but this was different. Every part of him wanted Cas closer. 

Cas's hand came to rest on Dean's back, unerring, directly over the new scar tissue. "I will want to see this later," he said, and Dean shivered, which made Cas step into him, and drift his hand across Dean's back, where the rebar had driven through. He didn't try to heal the lingering damage, though, and Dean wasn't sure why. Maybe later. When they had time for that. 

When he set his toothbrush back in the glass beside Cas's new one, Cas stepped away, but Dean wasn't having that. He'd already made up his mind; they were too far over the line to run back now. He gently pushed Cas against the wall and said, "One for the road," before leaning in to kiss him, slowly, thoroughly. Cas rested his hands on Dean's hips, and Dean deepened the kiss, because the more he kissed Cas, the more he wanted to kiss him. There was a helpless kind of joy spreading through him, a counterpoint to every loss he'd ever experienced. 

"Still hungry?" he murmured, sliding his hands underneath the hoodie to touch Cas's bare skin. He slid the heel of his right hand over the marking's on Cas's side and leaned close to press his lips beneath Cas's ear. Cas arched away from the door, his hips pressing into Dean's, and Dean could feel how hard he was. 

"You cannot imagine," Cas said, his voice a low burr, "how much I want you. How hungry I am for you." 

Dean surged against Cas and took his mouth for a deep, slow kiss, as Cas's hand cupped the back of his neck. "Damn, Cas," he whispered, when he pulled back. The idea of skipping off to breakfast and behaving like everything was normal was impossible. 

"I really do need some coffee," Cas said, though his eyes were raking over Dean like he wanted to throw him to the floor then and there, which...Dean was good with, really. "More of this later, though," he said, even as he kissed Dean again, and it was like pure sugar in Dean's veins, a sweetly perfect joy, all because of a simple kiss. 

Cas slipped out the door, and Miracle sat down by Dean's heels and looked up at him. He whined, and then gave a tiny, suppressed bark. 

"You said it," Dean answered. The two of them followed Cas down the hall to the kitchen. 

**

While Dean shoveled eggs into his face, and Cas sipped coffee, they established a few things. First, that while Cas was in the Empty, he was mostly asleep, and had awakened when Jack first touched his soul and slipped him out of that place, along with his brothers. 

"Brothers, plural?" Sam asked, with a mouthful of toast, because that was too important a question to wait for chewing. 

"Many of them. Gabriel, Uriel, Balthazar and Anna, for certain...and several hundred more from my garrison." 

"So, all your fellow soldiers. That you knew personally." Sam chewed another couple bites. 

"Most, yes." 

"Huh," Dean said. It was good to know Gabriel was back in action; he'd come through for them when they needed him most. "And they're in Heaven now?"

"Gabriel has resumed his duties as Archangel, and the others are doing productive work." 

Dean paused in pouring hot sauce over his eggs. "Wait. You know this because you were also in Heaven?" 

"For a time." Cas sipped his coffee serenely. "I wasn't brought back to Earth directly from the Empty." 

Dean dropped his fork with a clatter. "That's why you could hear me!" he exclaimed. "You'd been busted out of angel sleep!" Sam stared at him, and Dean picked up his fork again to point it at Sam. "Never mind," he said, "it's not important," and then began moving his eggs around his plate, one mystery solved. 

"Jack raised me to Heaven because he had work for me, and needed a trusted advisor to assist. He raised the others because he had already breached the Empty, and it seemed the best course of action."

"Also maybe because you asked him?" Dean said, because it seemed pretty suspicious that Jack would be plucking up angels he'd never known, for no reason. 

Castiel smiled that tiny smile. "I may have suggested it."

"Trusted advisor?" Sam asked, because, trust him to home in on the heart of it. "Doing what?" 

"He is remaking Heaven, breaking down walls. Changing many of the things that made it more like a sad prison than a true place of joy and rest." Cas sat with his hands around the mug, looking smug as hell, and Dean felt a sudden pang of love for him that made him set the fork down again. 

"His idea?" Sam asked softly, looking at Dean.

"More or less." Cas smiled down at his coffee again, and then lifted that brilliant smile to Sam, and oh, Dean was truly fucked, because that smile was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. 

"But if you were helping Jack, why did he send you back here?" Dean asked. 

"I can be useful here on Earth," Cas said, shifting his gaze back to Dean. "It is where my family is. Angels are not only useful in Heaven, as you know."

"So you're still an angel?" Dean asked, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. He ignored the burst of happiness it gave him to hear Castiel call them family, because he'd always known that. Castiel had told them years ago. It had never changed over the years since, for any of them, no matter how much they fought or hurt each other.

"It's...complicated," Cas said, which was always angel code for 'I could tell you but you mere mortals wouldn't understand,' which always made Dean want to pound the tabletop until Cas dislodged all his secrets like pocket change spilling out of his old trenchcoat. Cas rubbed his forehead and added, "I am very tired, but I'll gain strength over the next days and weeks as I sleep and take meals. May I stay here?"

"Of course you can," Sam said, at the same time Dean said, "Obviously, duh." Cas's eyes flicked up to Dean's and then away again, and Dean had a flash of all those times he hadn't wanted Cas to stay, or had turned him away, for what seemed like terrible reasons in hindsight. So for good measure, he took Cas's hand and held it, right there in his own kitchen, in front of Sam, because fuck it.

"You're staying," he said, and that prompted a quick smile from Cas and a clearing of the throat from Sam. Dean swiveled his head slowly over and said to Sam, "Catching a cold, are we?"

"Nope," Sam said, getting up quickly, but the bastard was hiding a smile. "Think I'll make a quick call to Claire, let her know you're back. That'll take a minute."

"Good thinking," Dean said, staring at his brother in full retreat. He was barely out of sight when Cas rose to refill his coffee cup, taking Dean's with him. Dean watched him go, noting the graceful way he moved across the kitchen. Like he'd always been there with them. Like maybe he always would be, now. 

But there was still some piece of the story Cas hadn't told them, and it was going to bug him until he pried it out. 

Cas set Dean's mug down, then sat down with his own. "Dean. There's." Cas stopped, and leaned forward to wrap his hands around the cup, knuckles white. "There's something I haven't told you." 

"No shock there," Dean said, wry, and Cas's eyes flicked up to him, reflecting hurt that Dean was immediately sorry for having inflicted. "Sorry," he said slowly. "Bad habits, I guess. Just, you and me, we don't have the best track record, sometimes, of telling each other all there is to tell." 

"No." Cas looked at him, and Dean knew they were both thinking of it, now. Hard to avoid it forever. Those last moments, before Castiel died, and all the things he'd rushed to say. 

Dean sighed. "You could have said something about all that. Before." Before Dean was moments away from Billie sending him to a permanent death. Before it was their last chance, their last conversation, and no way to ever make that right. 

"Could I?" An arch of Cas's brow, and Dean rolled his eyes in response. 

"Fine, maybe not. But this last go-round of me almost dying, after what you sacrificed for me last time...put some things into perspective, I guess."

"Almost dying has that effect on people," Cas said. "I should know." 

"Except you skipped the 'almost' parts, nearly every time."

"Granted." They smiled at each other, but Cas's smile faded a bit as he said, "You seemed surprised I asked Jack to return me to Earth." 

Dean searched Cas's face, looking for familiar tells. He did seem tired, and a little wary, but also, there was that earnest, hopeful look, one Dean had seen so many times when Cas believed something good was about to happen. "A little bit," he said, eventually. "Heaven is your home. But this is really what you wanted?"

"Yes. When I asked Jack's permission, he said I was needed in Heaven. Beyond remaking that realm, Chuck neglected so much. There was the matter of creating new angels and archangels, and-"

"Wait," Dean said, because this was another of those things that had once seemed impossible. "Jack can do that?" 

"He can do many things. All things, really. He has Chuck's powers, and many powers even Chuck did not, and he uses them...very differently." Cas paused and took a sip of his coffee. "I offered what assistance I could, but Jack knew what was required, and what changes were needed. He had time to consider it all those months he was learning among humans." 

"Still," Dean said, not even able to believe he was continuing to question it. But. "You wanted to come back here. To this sad, doomed little world."

Cas nodded, his lips curling at the corner from the reminder of that particular night, which had set so much of the future in motion. "Every moment I was in Heaven, I heard you praying. You may not know this, but when you were thinking of me, it was very much the same as a prayer. And I felt it as such."

"Jesus." Dean rubbed at the headache beginning between his eyes. He knew, even without Cas saying it, just how much time he'd spent thinking about Cas the last several months. 

"It was like having you with me, but far away, where I couldn't see you. And then you were hurt, and I felt your soul on the verge of ascending to Heaven, and I...wanted to come, to be here with you, but I couldn't interfere." 

The old Dean would have looked away, coughed, got up for a coffee refill to buy some time and hide his feelings, but really what was the point of that, now? 

"So," Dean said gruffly. 

"So." Cas reached out and settled his hand on top of Dean's, and the contact of his fingertips was like an electric shock, which smoothed into warm softness -- the same sensation he'd had when he'd watched Cas's grace exploding into his body. Beneath it was an _awareness_ , like Cas was opening to him the way an ancient book might, and Dean only had to open his eyes to understand what was written there.

"What-" Dean startled, but didn't pull his hand away. After a moment, the sensation faded. "What is that?"

"When I asked Jack to allow me to return to Earth, he made a deal with me." The corner of Cas's mouth lifted in a familiar, beautiful way. "That I might live out a lifetime here, and then I would return to Heaven, to resume my work." 

Dean frowned. "I don't understand. Live out a-" And then it dawned on him. Why Cas was so tired. Why he slept, and looked exhausted, and brushed his teeth. Not just because he had a form to maintain, for the pretense of humanity. "You _are_ human." 

"It might be more accurate to say, I'm...mortal." Cas looked down at their joined hands. "I do have my powers, and I have my wings. You felt them, last night," he said, and Dean remembered then, the low curl of heat in his belly when he'd climbed to wakefulness from a dream of falling, and had been sure he felt something soft and huge enfolding him. "But I'll age, and I'll die, and then I will return to Heaven, as Jack intended."

Dean wanted to ask, _are you saying you returned here just because of me_ , but he already knew the answer. The idea of it was so huge, it choked him; he couldn't even form the words. Cas's hand remained over his, warm, steady. And then Cas said, "I wanted to be where you are, for as long as you...are." 

"My track record isn't the greatest," Dean managed, even as his left hand was moving all by itself to cover Cas's where it held his right. "I fuck things up, Cas, and I'm good at it. I've never been able to...I've never...You know how I am." Even as he said it, a wave of memory crashed over him, of Cas's last words to him being full of love and hope about the core of who Dean was, the better parts of him Dean sometimes failed to see. 

"I know." Cas sat there, steady, despite his first-hand experience of the infinite ways Dean lacked coping mechanisms and was prone to quicksilver anger and lashing out, and Dean's heart flipped over in his chest. 

Desperately, he said, "I almost got taken out by a damn vampire and a piece of rebar not that long ago. What if I..." He stopped, because another terrible thought had occurred to him. "What if _you_ die?"

"Then I die. As you say, Heaven is my home." An expression Dean couldn't place was crossing Castiel's face. Amusement, maybe? Or...fondness. God, he'd missed trying to decipher all those little looks Cas gave him. "But I won't die, because as long as you are here, I will be. It's part of the deal. My soul is tethered to yours. As long as it remains here, so will mine. When you depart, we will return to Heaven. Jack has given us both a gift, and in the end, we will-"

"Be together," Dean said. "Tethered." The word had deeper meaning, he knew that. Jack had bound them, had tied Castiel's soul to his dinged and dented and mostly useless one, because Cas wanted it. Because Cas wanted this chance for them, to be happy. For him. For both of them. 

He tried to rise from the table and found himself sitting on the floor instead, his legs and hands shaking, and Castiel immediately moved to the floor beside him. Dean looped an arm around Cas and pulled him close, because they had wasted enough time and he was done, so fucking done building those boxes to hide all the things he felt. 

Something occurred to him then, about Jack and the other Nephilim. "Wait, I thought - a human with an angel's grace? Isn't that supposed to be an abomination?"

"New rules," Cas said. "I'm...unique. A one-off, as you would say. And when this is done, I'll be the first of Jack's new archangels." 

"The first...of...his..." Dean blinked; that was a lot to process. But Cas's hands, strong and big and so dearly missed, were cradling his face, and Cas was kissing him, and that chased all the big thoughts away, until there was only room for kisses, and feelings that refused to stay tucked away. 

_Tethered._

Dean asked wonderingly, "So are we soulmates, then?"

That made Cas smile against Dean's cheek. "No," he said. "You and Sam are soulmates. You will share Heaven in whatever form it takes; that will never change." He grew serious, and added, "I've spoken before of our bond, Dean, and now that bond is made real. It exists; it doesn't have to be something you ever feel, or are aware of, if it makes you uncomfortable - but I will know. When your life is ended, mine too will end."

"And the bond will break?" Dean didn't like that idea one damn bit.

"No. The bond remains. It will simply transfer planes of existence, with your soul."

"Our souls," Dean said, not sure why that was important - just that it was. 

"I stand corrected," Cas said primly, in that way that made Dean crazy to pin him down and kiss all the schoolmarm off him. "It will take a more benign form then, having served its purpose."

"Cas, this is...you, coming back, for me. Being mortal." Dean shook his head. "You didn't love being human last time you were forced into it. All the uncomfortable and weird things, especially. This is more of that. A lot of knowing that it's going to come to an end, when you least expect it. Aging...I don't know how that's going to go with those wings attached to you. It's all so weird."

"Dean. This is merely one chapter in my very, very long life." Cas smoothed his fingers through Dean's hair. "I have always been a good soldier. I've made many mistakes, and paid dearly for them. I have owed penance, and accepted it, even welcomed it, when I was able. I've done horrific things and wondrous things," he said, his fingertips brushing over Dean's shoulder. "And I never asked for anything in return, because that's not a soldier's place. But this once, I decided to do so."

"You really want this," Dean said softly. 

"Once I knew you wanted it as well, yes." Cas smiled. "Becoming human again does come with many unfortunate complications, it is true. But it also comes with one tremendous benefit - I can feel emotions acutely. Nothing muted, nothing hidden. And I wanted to experience that with you. It's worth being human."

"Sam is never going to stop teasing us about this. Just so you know," Dean said, because words like tether and bond and mortality and together were banging around in his head, colliding with joy and worry and fear of losing everything again. 

Castiel's hand slipped into his again. "A very small price to pay."

**

Not much changed after that. Not right away, anyway. 

Dean kept on recovering, because apparently the new rules also included a caveat that Cas's healing powers wouldn't work on Dean at all. Sam he could fix, but Dean had to go on suffering through physical therapy and Sam's nasty looks when he overexerted himself.

"Maybe it's Jack's way of reminding you that time is precious," Cas said to him one night, when they lay curled together in Dean's bed - their bed, now, though neither one of them ever said it. It was just the way it was. "To be cautious, if you value what you have." 

"I don't need any more reminders about that." Dean ran his hand down Cas's spine to see the way he shivered; Cas was moments from being inside him, and Dean loved this part, right before they were joined. He never said it out loud, because he was definitely not a gigantic girl about it, and besides, Cas knew. 

When they were moving together like this, and Cas was deep, and wouldn't let Dean look away, he could feel the...bond, or whatever. It threaded through him in ways he never could have described with words, but he always saw the feeling of it in Cas's eyes. Sometimes when Cas said his name, or spoke words in a hundred different languages against Dean's skin, he didn't need them translated; only the sensation mattered, the truth of what Cas said to him, lighting up the strange new current flowing between them. Sex had _never_ been like this before. He was ruined in all the best ways by the echoes of touch and connection across their bodies, deeper than skin, all the way into the eager bright corners of Dean's soul. 

It was even more than that. He knew where Cas was almost all the time without thinking about it. If he sustained so much as a paper cut while out of the bunker, Cas was calling him, wanting to know what happened. (Once in a while, Cas would pop in scowling, taking advantage of those new wings of his; Dean loved it, because it made Cas so fucking happy to have his freedom in every way.) If he was hungry, Cas might appear with a bowl of popcorn and a beer, just like sometimes he could tell Cas was sad and in need of some immediate Netflix and running commentary with bad jokes. 

Always, he was aware of the depth of Cas's feelings for him, and even though it freaked him out a little to know Cas could feel Dean's as well, it was kind of a relief. To not have to try to explain, or say it. To have it be understood. It was something he'd always wanted, though he'd never been able to explain it. Now, he didn't have to. 

Once in a while, he'd take Cas out under the stars on a warm night, spread him out on a blanket and kiss all of him, from the wards on his chest to his ticklish ankles to the dip in the small of his back, and indulge in the only kind of worship that would ever matter to him. 

He and Sam took on a hunt in Idaho, and Cas declined to come with them, because of course he did; he would have known the moment Dean proposed the case that Dean really wanted a little quality time with Sam on the road. It wasn't going to be long before Eileen and Sam figured out they ought to get on with it, and these hunting trips would start to become further and further apart. So off they went, to figure out what was eating the livers and brains of a bunch of middle-aged men who all liked to gossip together over breakfast at the same café. 

It did not go well. 

Dean had every intention of staying in the car while Sam dealt with the two shifters they knew about, because that was a Winchester cake walk. But then he saw three additional shifters sneaking into the warehouse, and he was out the door and running before he could think about it. 

Five shifters shouldn't have been a match for the two of them, even with Dean at half-strength. He shot one in the heart, but another tackled him from the side and knocked his gun away, and he had to go hand to hand with a silver knife. He hadn't swung his arms quite that much in months, and he was taking more than his fair share of punches, after being thrown to the ground for the third time. A wave of fear rattled through him - terror that he wouldn't be able to hold his own. For a split second, he wished he'd asked Cas to come, and the worst-case scenario flashed before his eyes: losing the fight, bleeding out right there, Cas miles away and feeling his fear and his pain, but helpless to do anything about it. Damn Jack and his rules. 

He'd only just given himself permission to love Cas. It didn't seem fair that something that precious could be stolen away, before Dean even got used to being a person whose life contained more happiness than pain. He had someone to go home to now. He wanted that more than anything in the world. 

Dean shook his head to clear it and shoved himself off the floor. "Not today, you sons of bitches," he said grimly, as he glanced Sam's direction. Only three were left and Sam had just shot one of them, so Dean just had to endure the bone-jarring pain for another few seconds while he -

The sensation of being swung up in the air swept over him, of being tugged forward at a speed he could barely perceive, and then he was standing unsteadily in the bunker, flailing for something to hold onto, and Cas was steadying him. All at once he knew the sensation, because he'd hated it as long as he could remember - angel flight.

"What the hell!" He pushed Cas away, hating his own weakness. "Why'd you pull me out of there! Sam's still there!" 

"I didn't," Castiel said, staring at him with alarm. "I could sense you were weakening and I was concerned for you, and I considered -- but I didn't - I haven't left here. I don't understand-"

"Take me back," Dean demanded, squashing down a rising tide of panic, the voice in the back of his head screaming _SamSamSam_. "Right now!"

Cas grabbed his shoulder and the two of them were moving again. This time Dean could sense their arc through time and space, but it wasn't as disorienting as it always had been before. He was connected to Cas, and Cas's deep sense of unease and alarm, and to that undercurrent of joy that was Cas's love of flying. 

They were back in the warehouse a split second later, though it felt much longer this time. Dean ignored his wrenching nausea and broke into a run to Sam's side the moment his feet hit the ground - but Sam was already finished with the remaining shifters, and he turned to give Dean a pissy look. "Nice timing!"

"You okay?" Dean demanded, ignoring Sam's scowl. He grabbed Sam by the shoulders and looked him over; there was blood on his face but a quick once-over showed it wasn't Sam's. No cuts, no gashes, nothing that wouldn't heal in a few days. Dean heaved a huge sigh of relief. 

"Are you?" Sam asked, flinging his bloody dagger to the ground to take a closer look at Dean.

In answer, Dean turned to Cas, the flash-fire of familiar anger rolling through his body. "Why'd you yank me out? What were you thinking?"

"Dean," Cas said, turning a troubled and very serious face to him. "I think it actually was you, not me, who invoked the bond." 

Dean scoffed at him, and then he sat down on the warehouse floor because it was either that or puke his guts out or have a heart attack from the exertion of killing his first shifter in who knows how long. Cas and Sam were right there, one at each shoulder. 

"Are you all right?" Cas asked, while Sam was patting him down. Dean batted him away and took a deep breath. 

"Explain," he said, trying to ignore how Sam had gone right back to tugging off Dean's layers to look at his back and chest. 

"Did you think about returning to the bunker?" Cas asked. 

"I was about to gank a shifter! Why would I-" Dean broke off suddenly, because he was replaying the whole thing in his head. "Oh, no," he said, because right before that shifter tossed him into a pile of boxes, he'd thought - he'd wanted Cas, sure, but more than that, he'd thought he shouldn't have left the bunker that day, that he was no good to Sam, that he'd never be able to hunt right again, and he wished he had told Cas to come. Which had led him to think that he wished he'd stayed back with Cas. That he wanted to go home to him.

"I think," he said carefully, "that I might have thought about how I wished I was back there with you. Only for a second!" 

"And I wanted you out of harm's way," Cas said. He was watching Sam's examination of Dean with worried eyes. "Perhaps we caused this."

"We caused this?" Dean did not like the hysterical edge to his voice, so he took another deep breath. "By wanting the same thing, more or less?"

"To be out of danger, and together, yes." Cas helped Sam lower Dean's shirt. "Is he all right?"

"Could have torn something inside, but everything outside is okay, no thanks to my dumbass brother," Sam said in a voice that could cut steel. 

"I am not sitting in the car while a pack of shifters murders you, so shut the hell up," Dean said hotly. He swiveled his head back to Cas. "Are you telling me that I can go zipping through the ether just because I want to?"

"Not exactly," Cas said. "But. Possibly if we both want you to. Or maybe, yes, if you want to. I'm not sure precisely what happened here."

"But," Dean said, some part of his joy shriveling up at the idea of what he could have found when Cas brought him back. "Fuck. What if I can't control it? What if Sam needs me and I just..." He made a motion with his hand, up toward the ceiling. Sam squeezed his shoulder; Dean reached up to pat his hand. 

"With practice, we should be able to understand what happened, and master it," Cas said. "So this never happens again."

"Tethered," Dean said, the way he might normally say "salads" and "laundry." Then he realized that somehow, he had...had he just flown? Without wings? "Tethered," he said again, but this time with more enthusiasm. 

"Yes," Cas said, looking at him with so much relief and -

Dean kissed him, right there, with his chest aching and Sam rolling his eyes and saying, "Are you going to be disappearing on every hunt when you start _pining_?"

Cas leaned into the kiss, on one knee with his hand still on Dean's neck, and Dean fisted his T-shirt and yanked him closer just to hear Cas's little growl of pleasure. "Wonder Twin powers, activate," he said gleefully, to a confused frown from Cas. "And no, Sammy, that ain't happening again, I'm not going to leave you with a pile of shifters by zapping home to Cas, because-"

"I'm coming with you from now on," Cas said, with a satisfying and definitive nod of his head.

"Hell yes you are. More smiting, less fighting." Dean let him go, now that Cas was suitably rumpled. "Help me up."

They did, and the three of them stood there not quite leaning on each other as they surveyed the mess they'd made. Or really, that Sam had made; he'd taken four of them out himself. Dean allowed himself a moment of pride about his little brother, who was a hell of a hunter.

"So, if I'm watching SpongeBob on Saturday morning, and I get to thinking about how you shouldn't be missing that animation classic, does that mean you'll appear on the couch?" Dean asked with a grin. 

"Classic is overstating things to a considerable degree." 

"Oh, them's fightin' words." Dean sighed happily, then turned and clapped Sam on the belly. "Shifters aren't relocating and burning themselves, Sammy!" 

"You can teleport twice but you can't drag a shifter?" Sam cuffed him on the head. 

"Hey! Wounded!" Dean gestured to himself. "Nauseous. Like you keep telling me, have to heal at my own pace!"

"I'll help," Castiel said, though Sam was still giving Dean the stink-eye. 

"Cas, wait," Dean said, as Sam went to get a tarp. "Seriously, it's - just because we wanted the same thing?"

"I'm not sure," Cas said thoughtfully. "It's something to explore. A new tool in the box, as it were." 

Dean glanced up and to the side, and bit his lip, and resisted every impulse he had to make a joke out of that. Cas chose that moment to move into his space, to run his hands under Dean's shirt and seek out the damaged skin over what was twisted inside him. Always, somehow, he found those hurt places, and seemed to soothe them with his touch. There were all kinds of healing, Dean supposed. 

"Never underestimate the power that comes from our desires being aligned," Cas said quietly. "It's why I'm on Earth with you now."

Pretty eloquent for a resurrected angel. Dean kissed him, because his heart may or may not have been melting under all that emotion, but no one could prove it even if it was true. 

"Stop making out and bring me a damn lighter," Sam said, back too damn soon with the supplies. 

Dean pulled one from his front pocket and tossed it to Sam. Always, there would be work to do, and now there'd be something more to fight for, besides. Even if it still didn't come naturally to him, believing in the good thing, or faith in winning the long game. 

As Dean watched Sam making disgusted faces over the pile of shifter corpses, Cas glanced back with a soft look in his eyes, and Dean caught and held his gaze for a moment. They had earned this doubtful privilege of hunting and killing monsters, and the satisfaction of leaving the world a better place in their own small way, now that Chuck and Death and the Darkness were in the rear-view forever. Dean laughed softly at himself and went to help them with the not-fun part of the job. He bumped Cas with his shoulder to provoke a smile, and because he could. 

Saving others, he'd always known how to do. Saving himself, he was working on; he wanted to do a better job of living well, of being worth all Cas and Sam had sacrificed. Maybe all of them were still a little bit broken, because they'd chosen this - chosen each other - every time; even over Heaven, in Cas's case. For Dean, he'd chosen Sam always, and would forever choose hunting over unremarkable days filling an ordinary life. Maybe their choices wouldn't be for everyone, but this was still the life Dean reveled in, with its dusty old bones and endless research and danger and pain, and Sam's laugh and his snoring and lousy taste in music, and Cas's steadfast love and his gentle hands on Dean's body at every opportunity. 

All of that - it was more than he'd ever hoped for; it was a start at mending, anyway. The rest of it, the three of them would figure out, one mostly-ordinary adventure at a time.


End file.
